In response to Gerry Harvey’s push to have GST applied to online purchases from overseas, commentators have been quick to criticise Australian retailers for having tired stores and not adding any value to the goods they’re selling.  Hence it’s good to see that some retailers are adding value by providing interesting retail experiences, rather than simply selling products, as reported in the Brisbane Times (“Fusion” the future of bricks and mortar business) yesterday:

Leading Brisbane fashion boutiques have embraced the concept of fusion, tweaking their business models to blend fashion with art, food, drinks and even beauty treatments.

Some say it’s merely their way of providing customers with a complete shopping experience while others are more frank; diversification in a digital age can come down to a question of survival.

The article mentions two of Brisbane’s best menswear stores, Richards & Richards, which features a cafe-bar as well as snappy Italian threads, and the Cloakroom, which features its own Pistols at Dawn range and a shoe shine service on Thursdays.

While providing a cafe or shoe shines won’t work for every retailer, retailers do have to think hard about how they can add more value and create better shopping experiences. This may involve, for example, providing floor staff with more training so they can speak more knowledgeably about the products  they are offering.  Dick Smith, with its “Techxperts”, has been an exemplar of this strategy.

Soaring online sales don’t just have implications for retailers, but for governments, too, as identified in a great blog post at Core Economics by Stephen King, who notes that, if the current trend continues, governments will find it very much harder to tax goods and services:

Tax avoidance and the on-line economy